Choosing Sides
The Temptation to Transcend Politics
Many of us, of the activist but bookish sort who read and write for magazines like this, know well the feeling that one does not want to be associated with either side of a divisive public debate and the wish that there were some other choice, some third way transcending the polarized positions in which everyone else is entrenched as helplessly and ineffectively as the French and German armies on the Western Front.
This feeling sometimes comes from intellectual snobbery, more often from an impatience with the limits of politics, there being an idealist if not a utopian in most of us. It may come also from a genuinely nonpartisan mind. We can see that people in any conflict tend to settle around two poles for reasons that don’t always take into account every possibility. As Christians who have only a temporary and pragmatic allegiance to any earthly political movement, we can sometimes see alternatives the partisans cannot.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
David Mills has been editor of Touchstone and executive editor of First Things.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
22.5—June 2009
C. S. Lewis on Civilization & the Natural Order by Timothy L. Hall
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
A Critical Memoir of Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey by Patrick Henry Reardon
19.1—January/February 2006
on Death & Seven of the Last Words of Socrates by Graeme Hunter
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
